A KITE IS A VICTIM By Leonard Cohen From: The Spice-Box of Earth March 1965 A kite is a victim you are sure of.You love it because it pullsgentle enough to call you master,strong enough to call you fool;because it liveslike a desperate trained falconin the high sweet air,and you can always haul it downto tame it in your drawer. A kite is a fish you have already caughtin a pool where no fish come,so you play him carefully and long,and hope he won’t give up,or the wind die down. A kite is the last poem you’ve written,so you give it to the wind,but you don’t let it gountil someone finds yousomething else to do. A kite is a contract of glorythat must be made with the sun,so make friends with the fieldthe river and the wind,then you pray the whole cold night before,under the travelling cordless moon,to make you worthy and lyric and pure.
Allen Ginsberg & Paul McCartney: "The Ballad of the Skeletons"
Tom Waits: Bronx Lullabye
Ed Sanders
Tutorial: advice on how to improve/revise your poems
Vancouverite Evelyn Lau reading 4 poems from "Treble" at the 2009 Writers Festival
Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold Writing assignment: Write a poem in the Style of WCWilliams For example see HERE for Variations on a Theme by William Carlos Williams
BY ROBERT FROST Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
***
"Stopping by Woods On a Snowy Evening" read by Robert Frost
Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
BY ROBERT FROST Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.
He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound’s the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.
The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
* MICHAEL ONDAATJE**
Canadian poet Michael Ondaatje's Biography HERE
"Sweet Like a Crow" read by Michael Ondaatje
SWEET LIKE A CROW
MICHAEL ONDAATJE for Hetti Corea, 8 years old ‘The Sinhalese are beyond a doubt one of the least musical people in the world. It would be quite impossible to have less sense of pitch, line or rhythm’—Paul Bowles Your voice sounds like a scorpion being pushed
through a glass tube
like someone has just trod on a peacock
like wind howling in a coconut
like a rusty bible, like someone pulling barbed wire
across a stone courtyard, like a pig drowning,
a vattacka being fried
a bone shaking hands
a frog singing at Carnegie Hall.
Like a crow swimming in milk,
like a nose being hit by a mango
like the crowd at the Royal-Thomian match,
a womb full of twins, a pariah dog
with a magpie in its mouth
like the midnight jet from Casablanca
like Air Pakistan curry,
a typewriter on fire, like a hundred
pappadans being crunched, like someone
trying to light matches in a dark room,
the clicking sound of a reef when you put your head into the sea,
a dolphin reciting epic poetry to a sleepy audience,
the sound of a fan when someone throws brinjals at it,
like pineapples being sliced in the Pettah market
like betel juice hitting a butterfly in mid-air
like a whole village running naked onto the street
and tearing their sarongs, like an angry family
pushing a jeep out of the mud, like dirt on the needle,
like 8 sharks being carried on the back of a bicycle
like 3 old ladies locked in the lavatory
like the sound I heard when having an afternoon sleep
and someone walked through my room in ankle bracelets.
Shane Koyczan "To This Day"
Leonard Cohen "A Kite is a Victim"
A KITE IS A VICTIM
By Leonard Cohen
From: The Spice-Box of Earth
March 1965
A kite is a victim you are sure of.You love it because it pullsgentle enough to call you master,strong enough to call you fool;because it liveslike a desperate trained falconin the high sweet air,and you can always haul it downto tame it in your drawer.
A kite is a fish you have already caughtin a pool where no fish come,so you play him carefully and long,and hope he won’t give up,or the wind die down.
A kite is the last poem you’ve written,so you give it to the wind,but you don’t let it gountil someone finds yousomething else to do.
A kite is a contract of glorythat must be made with the sun,so make friends with the fieldthe river and the wind,then you pray the whole cold night before,under the travelling cordless moon,to make you worthy and lyric and pure.
Allen Ginsberg & Paul McCartney: "The Ballad of the Skeletons"
Tom Waits: Bronx Lullabye
Ed Sanders
Tutorial: advice on how to improve/revise your poems
Vancouverite Evelyn Lau reading 4 poems from "Treble" at the 2009 Writers Festival
Typography from Ronnie Bruce on Vimeo.
Taylor Mali reading "Typography". Mali is an American English teacher, humorist and poet
Taylor Mali "Miracle Worker"
WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS
William Carlos Williams reading at Columbia (1942)
The Red Wheelbarrow
by William Carlos Williams
so much depends
upon
a red wheel
barrow
glazed with rain
water
beside the white
chickens
This Is Just To Say
BY WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS
I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox
and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast
Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold
Writing assignment: Write a poem in the Style of WCWilliams For example see HERE for Variations on a Theme by William Carlos Williams
ROBERT FROST
Robert Frost Biography HERE
"The Road Not Taken" read by Robert Frost
The Road Not Taken
BY ROBERT FROST
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
***
"Stopping by Woods On a Snowy Evening" read by Robert Frost
Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
BY ROBERT FROSTWhose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.
He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound’s the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.
The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
*
MICHAEL ONDAATJE**
Canadian poet Michael Ondaatje's Biography HERE
"Sweet Like a Crow" read by Michael Ondaatje
SWEET LIKE A CROW
MICHAEL ONDAATJEfor Hetti Corea, 8 years old
‘The Sinhalese are beyond a doubt one of the least musical
people in the world. It would be quite impossible to have
less sense of pitch, line or rhythm’ — Paul Bowles
Your voice sounds like a scorpion being pushed
through a glass tube
like someone has just trod on a peacock
like wind howling in a coconut
like a rusty bible, like someone pulling barbed wire
across a stone courtyard, like a pig drowning,
a vattacka being fried
a bone shaking hands
a frog singing at Carnegie Hall.
Like a crow swimming in milk,
like a nose being hit by a mango
like the crowd at the Royal-Thomian match,
a womb full of twins, a pariah dog
with a magpie in its mouth
like the midnight jet from Casablanca
like Air Pakistan curry,
a typewriter on fire, like a hundred
pappadans being crunched, like someone
trying to light matches in a dark room,
the clicking sound of a reef when you put your head into the sea,
a dolphin reciting epic poetry to a sleepy audience,
the sound of a fan when someone throws brinjals at it,
like pineapples being sliced in the Pettah market
like betel juice hitting a butterfly in mid-air
like a whole village running naked onto the street
and tearing their sarongs, like an angry family
pushing a jeep out of the mud, like dirt on the needle,
like 8 sharks being carried on the back of a bicycle
like 3 old ladies locked in the lavatory
like the sound I heard when having an afternoon sleep
and someone walked through my room in ankle bracelets.